Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

He reached out, lifted the little tube from off the desk.

“An old-fashioned toy,” he said. “Guaranteed old-fashioned. A company just started putting them out. You put it up to your eye and turn it and you see pretty pictures. Colored glass falling into place. There’s a name for it—”

“Kaleidoscope,” said one of the newsmen, quickly. “I’ve read about them. In an old history on the manners and customs of the early twentieth century.”

“Have you tried it, Mr. Chairman?” asked Andrews.

“No,” said Webster. “To tell the truth, I haven’t. I just got it this afternoon and I’ve been too busy.”

“Where’d you get it, Mr. Chairman?” asked a voice. “I got to get one of those for my own kid.”

“At the shop just around the corner. The toy shop, you know. They just came in today.”

Now, Webster knew, was the time for them to go. A little bit of pleasant, friendly banter and they’d get up and leave.

But they weren’t leaving—and he knew they weren’t. He knew it by the sudden hush and the papers that rattled quickly to cover up the hush.

Then Stephen Andrews was asking the question that Webster had dreaded. For a moment Webster was grateful that Andrews should be the one to ask it. Andrews had been friendly, generally speaking, and Interplanetary Press dealt in objective news, with none of the sly slanting of words employed by interpretative writers.

“Mr. Chairman,” said Andrews, “we understand a man who was converted on Jupiter has come back to Earth. We would like to ask you if the report is true?”

“It is true,” said Webster, stiffly.

They waited and Webster waited, unmoving in his chair.

“Would you wish to comment?” asked Andrews, finally.

“No,” said Webster.

Webster glanced around the room, ticking off the faces. Tensed faces, sensing some of the truth beneath his flat refusal to discuss the matter. Amused faces, masking brains that even now were thinking how they might twist the few words he had spoken. Angry faces that would write outraged interpretative pieces about the people’s right to know.

“I am sorry, gentlemen,” said Webster.

Andrews rose heavily from the chair. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” he said.

Webster sat in his chair and watched them go, felt the coldness and emptiness of the room when they were gone.

They’ll crucify me, he thought. They’ll nail me to the barn door and I haven’t got a comeback. Not a single one.

He rose from the chair and walked across the room, stood staring out the window at the garden in the sun of afternoon.

Yet, you simply couldn’t tell them.

Paradise! Heaven for the asking! And the end of humanity! The end of all the ideals and all the dreams of mankind, the end of the race itself.

The green light on his desk flashed and chirped and he strode back across the room.

“What is it?” he asked.

The tiny screen flashed and a face was there.

“The dogs just reported, sir, that Joe, the mutant, went to your residence and Jenkins let him in.”

“Joe! You’re sure?”

“That’s what the dogs said. And the dogs are never wrong.”

“No,” said Webster slowly, “no, they never are.”

The face faded from the screen and Webster sat down heavily.

He reached with numbed fingers for the contro1 panel on his desk, twirled the combination without looking.

The house loomed on the screen, the house in North America that crouched on the windy hilltop. A structure that had stood for almost a thousand years. A place where a long line of Websters had lived and dreamed and died.

Far in the blue above the house a crow was flying and Webster heard, or imagined that he heard, the wind-blown caw of the soaring bird.

Everything was all right—or seemed to be. The house drowsed in the morning light and the statue still stood upon the sweep of lawn—the statue of that long-gone ancestor who had vanished on the star-path. Allen Webster, who had been the first to leave the Solar System, heading for Centauri—even as the expedition now on Mars would head out in a day or two.

There was no stir about the house, no sign of any moving thing.

Webster’s hand moved out and flipped a toggle. The screen went dead.

Jenkins can handle things, he thought. Probably better than a man could handle them. After all, he’s got almost a thousand years of wisdom packed in that metal hide of his. He’ll be calling in before long to let me know what it’s all about.

His hand reached out, set up another combination.

He waited for long seconds before the face came on the screen.

“What is it, Tyler?” asked the face.

“Just got a report that Joe—”

Jon Culver nodded. “I just got it, too. I’m checking up.”

“What do you make of it?”

The face of the World Security chief crinkled quizzically. “Softening up, maybe. We’ve been pushing Joe and the other mutants pretty hard. The dogs have done a top-notch job.”

“But there have been no signs of it,” protested Webster. “Nothing in the records to indicate any trend that way.”

“Look,” said Culver. “They haven’t drawn a breath for more than a hundred years we haven’t known about. Got everything they’ve done down on tape in black and white. Every move they’ve made, we’ve blocked. At first they figured it was just tough luck, but now they know it isn’t. Maybe they’ve up and decided they are licked.”

“I don’t think so,” said Webster, solemnly. “Whenever those babies figure they’re licked, you better start looking for a place that’s soft to light.”

“I’ll keep on top of it,” Culver told him. “I’ll keep you posted.”

The plate faded and was a square of glass. Webster stared at it moodily.

The mutants weren’t licked—not by a long shot. He knew that, and so did Culver. And yet—

Why had Joe gone to Jenkins? Why hadn’t he contacted the government here in Geneva? Face saving, maybe. Dealing through a robot. After all, Joe had known Jenkins for a long, long time.

Unaccountably, Webster felt a surge of pride. Pride that if such were the case, Joe had gone to Jenkins. For Jenkins, despite his metal hide, was a Webster, too.

Pride, thought Webster. Accomplishment and mistake. But always counting for something. Each of them down the years. Jerome, who had lost the world the Juwain philosophy. And Thomas, who had given the world the space-drive principle that now had been perfected. And Thomas’ son, Allen, who had tried for the stars and failed. And Bruce, who had first conceived the twin civilization of man and dog. Now, finally, himself—Tyler Webster, chairman of the World Committee.

Sitting at the desk, he clasped his hands in front of him, stared at the evening light pouring through the window.

Waiting, he confessed. Waiting for the snicker of the signal that would tell him Jenkins was calling to report on Joe. If only—

If only an understanding could be reached. If only mutants and men could work together. If they could forget this half-hidden war of stalemate, they could go far, the three of them together—man and dog and mutant.

Webster shook his head. It was too much to expect. The difference was too great, the breach too wide. Suspicion on the part of men and a tolerant amusement on the part of the mutants would keep the two apart. For the mutants were a different race, an offshoot that had jumped too far ahead. Men who had become true individuals with no need of society, no need of human approval, utterly lacking in the herd instinct that had held the race together, immune to social pressures.

And because of the mutants the little group of mutated dogs so far had been of little practical use to their older brother, man. For the dogs had watched for more than a hundred years, had been the police force that kept the human mutants under observation.